The latest from India

On June 8th, 2006, John Portman & Associates announced the signing of a contract to design the new Gayatri Park Hyatt in Hyderabad, India. Now, construction on the new 250-room hotel is nearing completion, with the grand opening scheduled for later this year. In April, the sculpture “Becoming” was installed in the hotel’s atrium lobby. John Portman, the artist who is also the hotel’s architect, noted that the undulating form of the sculpture is a contemplative counterpoint to the dramatic atrium, and that the sculpture’s base, a thin circular stainless steel platform, creates the impression that the twenty-seven foot (8.23-meter) high sculpture is floating just above the surface of the water of the reflecting pool that runs the length of the lobby. The photo to the right shows John Portman with the sculpture in progress, members of the architectural design team, and Dick Polich of the preeminent Polich Tallix Foundry in New York where the sculpture was fabricated. Note how the sculpture was created in pieces. That was so it could be broken down and shipped in special containers to Hyderabad where it was then carefully re-assembled, sealed and polished to a matte white finish.